4. Vengeance upon Your Children’s Children #3
The thing is, I’ve wanted to get out of my apartment for years. Plenty of people live in apartments. But at almost twenty-seven, I want my own place. I don’t feel like a real adult when I share walls with college students who play YUNGBLUD until three o’clock in the morning.
Those neighbors are the only reason I know who YUNGBLUD even is . Same with Dua Lipa and Jelly Roll.
Sleepless nights and musical introductions aside, I want out of my apartment. It’s a small goal. But where most people think of life like a ladder—full of rungs to climb, steps upward leading to more successes in some distant future—all I want is to have a little space that’s my own.
I don’t need a big house or a big life. Just something small and mine. A small life with small goals isn’t a bad thing—this is what I keep explaining to Toni when she tells me to Live a little and Dream big and Come out, it’s a Friday night!
On an elementary school nurse’s salary, a house is dreaming big—financially speaking.
I’ve obsessively scoured real estate websites for years, making note of areas with cute homes that are also close to my school but not completely out of the realm of financial possibility.
Jacob paying me could be my big break. I happen to know how much Jacob’s athletes make. And I know how much of a percentage he gets. He can’t skimp on paying me the big bucks.
I could ask for an amount that would make a significant dent in my down payment fund. I’d feel icky about it, but it is what it is.
“He needs you,” Jacob says. His thinnest and least persuasive argument by far.
“He needs something . Not me specifically.”
“You,” he repeats. “Listen—though I really do want him back on the ice, I’m seriously concerned about him.
When pro athletes deal with injuries, a great deal of the recovery work is mental.
And since Wyatt has holed up in this house I didn’t even know he owned and hasn’t been showing up to his physical therapy appointments or answering his phone, it’s fair to say he could use a friend. ”
I’m not his friend. The man didn’t even recognize me in his yard. Still. Jacob’s concern gives me pause.
“So, why aren’t you here? If your bestie needs a friend.”
“I’ve just signed two new clients and...”
He drones on about sports things. Negotiations. Contracts. Draft picks. I wipe sweat from my forehead while my eyes glaze over. I should get out of the heat. Even in the shade, the temps have to be cresting ninety degrees. My head throbs again.
“I can’t get away or I would have been there already,” Jacob concludes.
I believe him. But I also believe he didn’t try as hard as he could have, probably assuming I would, per the usual, spring into action the moment he asked.
“Think about it. He’s lost the most important thing in his life. At least temporarily.”
This strikes me as desperately sad. If hockey is the most important thing in Wyatt’s life, I get why he’s burrowing into his own pit of despair in this little murder cottage.
Which, honestly, is the perfect setting for a pit of despair.
“The man is in a dark place,” Jacob says. “Being around you is like taking hits of pure sunshine.”
That’s actually...really nice. So nice that I might be softening a little to his ridiculous plan.
Until the sun pokes out from behind a cloud and I remember being stuck in the back of a cop car.
“I’d appreciate the compliment more if you hadn’t tricked me into coming here and now weren’t trying to manipulate me into an inconvenient favor.” A very profitable inconvenient favor.
This last point is another inconsequential argument for me to stay. Jacob doesn’t seem to have realized, but I am not sunshine for Wyatt. Based on the way he treats me, Wyatt views me more as a tiny dark cloud raining on only his head.
Over the years, anytime I wasn’t avoiding him and we were forced to interact, I was snippy. Snappy. Sarcastic.
In return, he has been surly and sardonic. I suspect he spends time quietly noting all the ways I’m lacking. He probably has a notebook somewhere with a long list.
“Please, Josie. He’s struggling and needs someone.” Jacob pauses. “It’s not just about his career but his life.”
“Well...that sucks for him,” I say finally.
It’s the nicest platitude I can offer, though it comes with a pang of guilt.
Because I know I’m being too harsh. Except this is about Wyatt.
The man who, as I’m reminded by the bead of sweat trickling down my neck and throb of my head, is responsible for the time I spent in the back of a cop car in cuffs.
But aside from the man in question, I also resent the fact that Jacob is asking this of me. Because while I hate to think this of my own brother, I know his motives aren’t simply altruistic or about his friendship with Wyatt.
“He won’t want me to stay,” I say.
“No, he won’t,” Jacob agrees. “But he doesn’t have a choice. He knows I’ll keep sending people. And now I’ve brought out the big guns.”
“I’m the big guns, huh?”
He chuckles. “You’re like a battleship cannon.”
“Um, thanks?”
“Look,” Jacob says with a sigh. “I know this situation sucks. I should have been honest with you both, and that’s on me. I am sorry about how today went. But I really think the guy needs help, and I think you’re the only person who can get through to him.”
“I think you’re confused. Wyatt hates me,” I say again.
“He doesn’t hate you, Josie. Hardly.” He gives a little chuckle, like this is funny.
“Are we talking about the same person? The one who has despised me from the first moment we met?”
“I’m not sure you’re remembering correctly,” Jacobs says.
The thing is: I am remembering correctly.
And even if I could somehow forget the night Jacob first brought Wyatt home, I have now acquired years’ worth of Wyatt’s dark looks, single-syllable answers, and surly comments like souvenirs. A neat row of evidence behind glass, showcasing Wyatt’s disdain aimed right at me.
“Doesn’t he have family who could be doing this instead of me?”
“No.” Jacob doesn’t say more, but he manages to make that one word sound both weighted with subtext and also final.
I’m dying to know what this means. Does Wyatt not have family? Or does he not have family willing or able to help?
I switch gears since I’m not going to convince Jacob. “What about the Super Summer Sibling Extravaganza?”
I have a feeling I already know the answer. Even though I desperately want to hear a different one. Maybe one where Jacob says he’ll be meeting me here later today or tomorrow so we can take our mystery trip. The two of us. Without a grumpy disc-golf-injured hockey star.
Jacob and I have been taking—or trying to take—an annual Super Summer Sibling Extravaganza for the past five years. But at this point, it’s less annual and more occasional.
The first time we made it happen, I was finishing up my LPN certification, just before I landed my current job as an elementary school nurse in Fredericksburg. Jacob was in his third year as a sports agent and was a whole lot less busy than he is now.
We prematurely declared it an annual event and then struggled to hit even two more times in those five years. Mostly due to his job or a new girlfriend.
Since I’m the flexible one with most of the summer off, the issue has never been my schedule or my significant other. A boyfriend would have to exist in order to impact my life and plans. So far, I haven’t found a guy I feel comfortable enough with to let my guard down, much less plan trips around.
Anyway. I had really been looking forward to this year’s trip—even if Jacob kept the details totally secret. Apparently in order to lure me here for this nefarious purpose.
“I plan to make it down there to see you,” Jacob hedges. “In a few weeks. Maybe a month.”
“Wait—you expect me to stay here for weeks? A month ?”
“Again, I’ll pay you,” Jacob says. “Loads more than you’d make tutoring or whatever.”
“No,” I say. But my brain is screaming, Say yes! Say yes! Say yes!
“Double what you would normally make in a summer.”
“Not enough.” But getting closer. I can literally feel my resolve crumbling, coming down like a building blasted with dollar signs rather than dynamite.
A house , I think. A down payment.
But... Wyatt .
“Fine. Triple what you normally make tutoring for a whole summer.”
“Quadruple.”
I think I’ve pushed too far when he’s quiet for a long moment.
Then he groans. “Fine.”
The air shimmers, and I sway a little. I need to get out of the heat. I need more water.
I need a minute to think about what I’ve just agreed to.
“Do we have a deal?” Jacob asks.
I glance out over the water, watching a gull circling lazily overhead as the sun starts to dip low in the sky near the trees. “We have a maybe .”